Doesn't Amazon also have offices all over the world plus remote consultants and contractors? My last year of pre-pandemic work (not Amazon) I spent working from NYC for a client in the Midwest, with developers in South America and an account team on the west coast. Executives were so proud they could staff teams from anywhere on anything to maximize labor utilization and reduce costs. I would go to the office and see none of my team. This was considered peak collaboration. I would WFH whenever I felt like it because nobody would notice. Now all of a sudden we have to be together again.
I find WFH policies go through cycles between all-remote to always-office.
Three factors I suspect contribute to this:
1. execs/management are completely disconnected from the product of the labour they “manage.”
2. Greener-pastures effect.
3. Management attrition
Together, you have a class of people who aren’t involved in production telling everyone how to do their work. In one generation that is stuck in-office all the time they want WFH. So they work towards it and eventually we get to the pro-remote end of the cycle. Managers/execs get promoted or move on and eventually… the grass starts looking greener on the RTO side of the cycle. A new generation of managers starts working towards that.
All of this happens in the context of capital and interest rates. Lower rates and cheap property tends to favour WFH sensitive managers. High rates and expensive property favours RTO.
